A regional area of a school district in central Florida used the implementation of a house system as a school improvement intervention to impact school climate and academic achievement. The purpose of this study was to determine if a house system is an effective school improvement intervention that has a positive effect on school climate and academic achievement of students in elementary schools. Four research questions were developed to investigate if there was a difference in elementary schools that implemented a house system and ones that did not during the 2018-2019 school year. All schools included in the study had 5th grade students who responded to Cognia© elementary student survey. Those responses were used to study school climate. Historical attendance and suspension data for school year 2018-2019 was also used. The scale scores from the Florida Standard Assessment (FSA) were used to measure student achievement in reading and math. Of the six schools included in this study it was found that the implementation of a house system did have an impact on suspensions and student achievement on standardized tests in reading and mathematics. There was no evidence to support the implementation of a house system having an impact on school climate and student attendance. This study adds to the literature of the impact of a house system on elementary schools. The findings of this research have implications for further research on the house system as an intervention to improve academic achievement in reading and math at elementary schools.

In conducting a cross-cultural study with a quantitative method, the researchers need to effectively address the cultural and linguistic influence on the operation of the instrument (or scale) across population groups. Measurement invariance (MI) provides valuable information to this concern and is the key to many psychological and developmental research studies. It is tested by evaluating how well the specified model fits the observed data. Researchers had developed effective fit indices to evaluate MI. Most scholars utilized the chi-square test with some alternative fit indices (such as root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), standardized root-mean-square residual (SRMR), comparative fit index (CFI), and others) to report MI. Researchers argue about the sensitivity of these fit indices, and whether these fit indices accurately reflect the MI level. The current study followed Khojasteh and Lo (2015)'s study to test the sensitivities of a series of fit indices, including ΔCFI, ΔRMSEA, ΔSRMR, ΔGamma, and Δχ2, under specified conditions with Monte Carlo simulation data. Experimental conditions included test length, number of factors, sample sizes, factor loadings, and the percentage of noninvariant items. Results showed that the ΔCFI and ΔGamma are most powerful in testing invariance and are less sensitive to the sample size and non-invariance (or lack of invariance, LOI) situations. There was inflation in Type I error in the 2 factors 8 variable models. ΔSRMR and ΔRMSEA are more powerful only when the sample size is 1,000. ΔSRMR is sensitive to sample size and level of LOI; hence, it is not recommended. The results are compared with previous simulation studies and provide significant implications to researchers who are applying measurement invariance procedures about what fit indices to adopt in their studies.

The problem I address in this study is the persistence of inequity and low-self-concept among Black students. This study examines the ways in which dark-skinned African American girls' educational experiences support or impair their identity development. It adds to the body of knowledge by exploring personal journeys toward self-awareness amid family, school, and societal realities. While research exists regarding the achievement gap between Black students and other groups and the efforts to close that gap, research that specifically addresses the needs of Black girls is lacking. This study is significant because it brings attention to an underrepresented group, Black girls. Further, this study recognizes and attends to the nuances among this group by focusing on dark-skinned African American girls. Self-concept does affect the achievement of students. However, this study investigates self-concept in a new way. It considers the internal processing of self-awareness and identity formation. The purpose of the study is to examine the ways in which African American girls' educational experiences support or impair their identity development. This qualitative study uses the transcendental phenomenological approach to describe the educational experiences of dark-skinned African American middle grades and high school girls as they develop and explore their identities. I interviewed African American girls who perceive themselves as dark-skinned about their educational experiences and how these experiences have or have not supported their understanding and perceptions of their own heritage and Black identity. Findings show that the participants perceived the school environment to be hostile and unsupportive of their identity development.

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Increasingly researchers are turning to online focus groups as a qualitative research method, yet rigorous methodological studies regarding the quantity, quality and diversity of the data generated relative to traditional in-person focus groups are limited. This study experimentally tests the idea generation capabilities of online text-based focus groups versus traditional in-person focus groups using sustainability in the hospitality industry as the idea generation topic. Participants were purposively sampled from the hospitality program at a large Southeastern university and randomly assigned into one of two treatment groups: online text-based or traditional in-person focus groups. The in-person focus groups resulted in a larger word count, and a higher number of ideas generated, although both in-person and online generated an equivalent number of unique ideas. The online focus group generated a comparable average quality of ideas and number of good ideas. There was a high degree of overlap in themes generated by both groups. The results show that online focus groups are capable of generating a comparable level of idea quantity, quality and diversity relative to in-person focus groups.

The racial academic achievement gap, identified as the underachievement of racially, culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse (RCELD) students and documented by research, is visible in all education organizations (Griner & Stewart, 2013; National Center for Education Statistics, 2019; O'Connor, Hill, & Robinson, 2009). Since the United States Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, repudiating the concept of separate but equal, laws concerning the need for equal education access have been enacted and educational policies have been created and implemented, but this achievement gap continues to exist (Williams, 2011). Culturally responsive leadership and culturally relevant pedagogy are research-based theories and practices that work towards meeting the needs of the growingly diverse population (Gay, 2018). A mixed method design utilized the explanatory sequential approach to research what culturally responsive beliefs, espoused practices, and supports elementary public-school principals convey in high performing urban schools. The design included the use of surveys and interviews to collect anonymous data from principals on their experiences in these roles and the influences they convey at their urban elementary school to narrow the racial academic achievement gap. Survey data collected with the use of Qualtrics Survey Software and interview data collected through individual interviews were conducted. Audio recordings of the interviews were transcribed and reviewed for themes. Creswell's six steps of data analysis and interpretation were utilized to analyze and interpret the data collected. Multiple reliability and validity measure occurred in this study. The results are compiled for future implications and recommendations are made.

This dissertation used classroom observations, movement mapping, instructor interviews, and student focus groups to examine the ways in which both instructors and students navigated the classroom spaces they were assigned in upper-level, discipline-specific courses. By focusing on three diverse disciplines (writing and rhetoric, education, and chemistry), this dissertation makes arguments about how the design of classroom spaces (as well as the tools that are housed therein) support, facilitate, and detract from a student's ability to develop a disciplinary identity, which is defined here as the social and linguistic construction of a practitioner of a discipline that is shaped by the language, positions, and peer acknowledgement negotiated by that discipline. Moreover, this dissertation also makes arguments about how tools that are common across many disciplines (desktops, chairs, etc.) support or detract from student engagement. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that teachers across disciplines can be mindful of the spaces they are assigned (even if those spaces were perhaps not designed with disciplinary goals in mind) in an effort to help students begin to think of those spaces as extensions of their discipline so they can better imagine themselves as future professionals in those spaces.

A mixed method, exploratory, sequential research design was conducted to investigate the presence of latent bias in early childhood STEM literature content, applying a non-biased, sociocultural, STEM identity, theoretical framework. A survey of children's perceptions of gender and a content analysis found unintentional bias. Exploratory findings confirmed 102 children were gendering images. An examination of the relationship between the participants' gender and how the participant gendered AND preferred the images indicated differences existed between boys and girls. Children preferred images perceived as matching their own, with statistical significance. Girls were found to prefer images less than boys AND they were more likely to gender the images. Children were more likely to give gender to the 50 images considered in the study, than to non-gender them. The gendering and preference was found to be statistically significantly higher for anthropomorphic and personified inanimate images. Additionally, a content analysis of eight award winning and popular selling STEM children's books were conducted and were found to contain biased narratives and image content. A content analysis found significant differences relating to the frequency of character representation in the eight books. Analysis indicated a higher lexical representation of females to males, and image representation was more male than female. Further analysis of additional books and images is warranted from the findings of this exploratory study.